Greatings, My name is Nick Rathke, and as my alias implies, I am for open source. Robotics is still a hobby for me, but I hope to turn it into a full time job. My real job is ... well that's a good question. Basicly I am a software engineer. Right now I spend half my day writing 3D Lingo ( Macromedia Director ) code for on-line 3D trianing of industrial machines. The other half, I spend writing a 3D streaming server with a web client, because we are maxing out the abilities of Director. In my spare time I work on robotics. There are three designs that I am working on right now. 1) A basic mobile base ( based on the designs of "The Brak Project" 2) A Quadrapod and 3) A Humanoid based on the designs of Open Pino Platform. I am setting up a web site with all the hardware and software info at www.siliconlifeforms.com

Recent blog entries by iam4opnsrc

If Steve happens to read this. there is a root account that
you can su to in max OS X. It's just not set by default, and
you have to log as a admin users first. If you log in with
an admin account You cant set root in
Application/Utilities/Netinfo Manager then under the menu
item Domain -> Security.

Okay, my web site sucks..... I am in the process of moveing
it to a server that supports php and mysql, so that I can
use postnuke. I found that exporting DXF's from Lightwave7.0
to Qcad is not working. So I have to go back and redo most
of my cad stuff in Qcad. Qcad to Lightwave seems to work
great. I am gettimg closer to having most of the parts for
my base robot system. My work was kind an let me have 2
wireless cards, for testing. I have spent a lot of time
re-writting qcam to work with 2 cameras at the same time.
Plus I have been adding in socket code to send vision data
back to my cluster. It seems that after 2 years of nothing
but Java, my c/c++ is very rusty........

I have been re-working the designs from the BRAK modile base
to hanndle 2 mother boards. Last night I found a bunch of
24v dc/dc ATX power supplies for around $160.00. I have also
found a place close to my work that will make a the aluminum
parts. Next week I can take them the designs and get some
pricing. I am working on posting more info on my web site.